An article by a woman who is “fighting” her 7-year-old daughter’s “childhood obesity” at home–published in the April issue of Vogue–is causing a big backlash online among readers critical of the magazine and its author.

Dara-Lynn Weiss, the author, wrote about her response to a pediatrician who suggested that her daughter, Bea, should be put on a diet because–at 4’4″ and 93 pounds–she was clinically obese and could be at risk for high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. It wasn’t the diagnosis that readers railed against, but Weiss’ management of Bea’s subsequent year-long diet.

“Sometimes Bea’s after-school snack was a slice of pizza or a gyro from the snack vendor,” Weiss wrote. “Other days I forced her to choose a low fat vegetable soup or a single hard-boiled egg… When she was given access to cupcakes at a party, I alternated between saying, ‘Let’s not eat that, it’s not good for you'; ‘Okay, fine, go ahead, but just one'; and ‘Bea, you have to stop eating crap like that, you’re getting too heavy,’ depending on my mood. Then I’d secretly eat two when she wasn’t looking.”

“The socialites who write personal essays for Vogue aren’t known for their kindness and humility,” Katie Baker wrote on Jezebel.com. But Weiss “has to go down in history as the one of the most f—ed up, selfish women to ever grace the magazine’s pages.”

Weiss “comes across as obsessive and the fact that she made such an issue of her daughter’s weight, both in public and in Vogue—seems wrong,” Dhani Mau wrote on Fashionista.com. An anonymous blogger for New York magazine added: “I’m pretty sure Weiss just handed her daughter the road map to all her future eating disorders.”